Variety's Scores

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For 17,832 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,164 out of 17832
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17832
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17832
17832 movie reviews
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  1. Ouija: Origin of Evil
    After an hour or so spent establishing characters worth caring about, the narrative starts to devolve, and the more the film circles back to the mythology of “Ouija,” the sillier it gets. Much like the characters at its center, this prequel can’t outrun the ghosts of its past.
  2. Imperium
    Imperium’s depiction of the white-nationalist underground is ultimately background for a straightforward potboiler, and the film is at its best when it stays in that arena.
  3. Tomb Raider
    The movie is full of vine-swinging, bow-and-arrow-shooting, ancient-spirit-meeting action, but most of it is staged on a convincing human scale, one that’s been expertly tailored to its star’s understated directness.
  4. Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil
    Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil brings us literally closer to Bosch’s images than one could probably get in almost any museum. As directed by Pieter van Huystee, the film offers a true immersion in his artistry. But it’s also a little slipshod — an off-kilter window into the politics of the art world. It’s like a fascinating magazine feature with some missing pieces.
  5. Skiptrace
    Skiptrace remains lively, diverting, and essentially good-natured even when it’s cheerfully dumb, exploiting its diverse locations for every last drop of local color.
  6. 13th
    More than just another documentary, it’s a crucial and stirring document — of racism and injustice, of politics and the big-picture design of America — that, I believe, will be watched and referenced for years to come.
  7. Gold
    Directed with an odd mix of human compassion and giddy abandon by Stephen Gaghan (“Syriana”), Gold is a lively portrayal of what’s often misidentified as the American Dream, but might be more accurately described as the American Fantasy — where men dream of wealth and success without having to put in the work.
  8. The Lost Arcade
    The Lost Arcade is an engaging minor movie, but it touches on something that’s being lost in the age of technology that’s much bigger than video-game arcades: the feeling that there’s a reason — driving and inescapable and romantic — to leave home.
  9. Spa Night
    Spa Night serves as an homage to the sacrifices first-generation immigrants made in order that their children could achieve their full potential in the States, expanding the concept of “pride” far beyond its protagonist’s gay identity.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rocketeer
    Newcomer Campbell exhibits the requisite grit and all-American know-how, but the lead role is written with virtually no humor or subtext. Those around him come off to better advantage, notably Dalton as the deliciously smooth, insidious Sinclair; Sorvino and Alan Arkin, with the latter as the Rocketeer’s mentor; Terry O’Quinn as Hughes; and the lovely, voluptuous Connelly.
  11. Una
    Needless to say, Una is not an easy film to watch, in part because it deals with not just the act of pedophilia (never depicted outright) but also its consequences, exposing the raw wounds still seething long after the inappropriate relationship has ended.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pete's Dragon
    Pete’s Dragon is an enchanting and humane fable which introduces a most lovable animal star (albeit an animated one).
  13. The Tenth Man
    This is the sort of quiet, well-observed comedy that is characteristic of Burman’s oeuvre, and it’s in ample supply here.
  14. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
    As a documentary, “Olympic Pride” is a little on the staid side. The film’s writer-producer-director, Deborah Riley Draper, works in a variation on the Ken Burns style.... Yet she does an absorbing job of capturing a historical moment that was even more fraught than it’s generally imagined to be.
  15. The Lost City of Z
    The Lost City of Z is a finely crafted, elegantly shot, sharply sincere movie that is more absorbing than powerful. It makes no major dramatic missteps, yet it could have used an added dimension — something to make the two-hour-and-20-minute running time feel like a transformative journey rather than an epic anecdotal crusade.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Splash
    Screenplay is marred by some glaring loopholes in its inner structure but story is a sweet takeoff on the innocence, mythology and sensuality associated with mermaids.
    • Variety
  17. Swallows and Amazons
    It’s heartening to see Ransome’s fiction taking on a new and more independent form, suggesting an ongoing relevance for a series of books that could easily be viewed as too dated for modern children. As the kids put it: Swallows and Amazons forever.
  18. Hidden Figures
    Hidden Figures is empowerment cinema at its most populist, and one only wishes that the film had existed at the time it depicts — though ongoing racial tensions and gender double-standards suggest that perhaps we haven’t come such a long way, baby.
  19. Kiki
    Regrettably, Kiki seems far less interested in entertainment than activism.
  20. Posthumous
    There’s considerable charm in the pairing of Marling and Huston.
  21. Black
    This easily exportable, minority-driven drama has the potential to launch the careers of its young directors and cast.
  22. Do Not Resist
    The doc is stylistically uninspiring, with a tedious threatening sound design, but the powerful subject matter largely overcomes such missteps.
  23. Tunnel
    While Kim Seong-hun’s Tunnel sounds like it resembles any number of creepy tunnel pics or grand catastrophe epics, it’s actually a lean, enjoyable disaster story with enough distinctive elements to make it feel relatively fresh.
  24. Born in China
    To the extent that Born in China is, by its very existence, a minor act of cross-cultural diplomacy, its most progressive effect is to unveil the majestic diversity of Chinese landscapes.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Double Life of Veronique
    Despite pic’s many-splendored outbursts of filmic creativity and intense emotion, final result, about the opposite destinies of a Polish girl and a French girl who look alike and have the same name and tics, remains a head-scratching cipher with blurred edges.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Phantasm
    Strong point of the feature is that it’s played for both horror and laughs.
  27. Starving the Beast
    Starving the Beast repeatedly sounds cautionary notes that escalate to the level of fretful alarms. And yet, for all that, the movie never seems shrill or didactic.
  28. Miss Sloane
    Miss Sloane is a talky, tense political thriller, full of verbal sparring and fiery monologues, undone by a really dumb ending. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t smart for most of its running time.
  29. Chuck
    The film is most thoughtful, and sometimes even painful, as a study of the pitfalls (and pitiful rewards) of local celebrity.
  30. The Ivory Game
    There are moments when the movie tugs at your heart, but the subject matter, because it’s so epic, deserves an even more probing and definitive treatment.
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